The width of a square is increased by 15%. Calculate the percentage change in the area of a square?

thank you
xx

May 17th 2008, 09:34 AM

Unenlightened

Quote:

Originally Posted by livyg123

How woulld yo answer this question and get all three marks?

The width of a square is increased by 15%. Calculate the percentage change in the area of a square?

thank you
xx

Ok, you'd start off with a square, with four equal sides. Let's assign 100 to be the length of each of these sides. This means the area of the square is 100 * 100 = 10000.
The width of the square is increased by 15%, (turning it into a rectangle), So now you have two sides of 100 and two of 115.
110 * 115 = 11500 is the new area